House of Thieves Read Online Free Page A

City. Cross had received his share of this new work entirely by word of mouth. Men he knew from the Union and Knickerbocker Clubs, the riding club, his Harvard classmates, gentlemen from Saint Thomas Episcopal and Newport—they all recommended him. But this fellow certainly didn’t belong to that set.
    The other requirement for the meeting was even odder. They were to meet in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. This intrigued Cross. Perhaps the project was work for the Archdiocese, which oversaw a lucrative group of churches, parochial schools, and convents. Though he was a society High Episcopalian, he didn’t mind designing for the Roman Papists, as his mother-in-law called them. Churches were a plum commission. Cross had designed just one, a Protestant church, early in his career, and he was eager for another opportunity.
    The man tipped his expensive top hat and left. Cross left at once, walking from his office on Broadway and Eighth Street to Fifth Avenue, where he caught the omnibus. He enjoyed the ride; from the top, he had a grandstand view of the city.
    Fifth Avenue was the backbone of his world. Its staid three- and four-story brownstones passed before his eyes, an unending line of high stoops, wrought iron railings, and striped canvas awnings extended out to block the summer sun. Cross watched as servants scurried in and out and families emerged from behind tall double doors of wood and glass. Broughams, hansoms, and victorias driven by men in top hats and black cutaway coats stood by the curbs, waiting for their owners. Dray carts carrying goods of all kinds slowly made their way up the avenue, making deliveries from house to house.
    At Madison Square, where Fifth Avenue and Broadway collided then separated, the building style shifted and became a mix of commercial and residential. The Fifth Avenue Hotel, currently the city’s most fashionable, stood on the left. The spire of the Marble Collegiate Church towered above Twenty-Ninth Street. Then, on the left, came a familiar sight: William Backhouse Astor II’s wide brownstone. Aunt Caroline’s home. To the south was a large walled garden that connected to her brother-in-law John Jacob Astor III’s house.
    The previous summer, Cross had stood in the garden with the Astors, looking over the high wall at President Grant’s funeral procession. Now, as he passed Aunt Caroline’s house, he smiled at its modesty. It was really only an extra-large brownstone, but that was the way it was supposed to be: unpretentious, dull, and respectable.
    As the horse-drawn omnibus slowly rattled along on the cobblestones, halting to pick up and drop off passengers, Cross glimpsed the cathedral. Just north of Fiftieth Street, Saint Patrick’s was complete but for its two spires, finally under construction after a hiatus of almost eight years. Its architect was James Renwick Jr., a man Cross greatly admired. Both were in the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. When he got the commission, Renwick had traveled around Europe for more than three years, observing and sketching twin-spired churches. Finishing Saint Patrick’s soaring towers would complete a magnificent design that rivaled the cathedrals of the Old World.
    The Knickerbockers, Protestant to the core, were shocked that such a huge Catholic church could be built on Fifth Avenue. It dwarfed nearby elite Protestant churches like Saint Thomas and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian. Weren’t there laws against such a thing, the Knickerbockers protested. The fact that the church was paid for with the nickels and dimes of Irish immigrants, the same trash that washed the Knickerbockers’ floors and dishes, was even more galling. There was talk of building a Protestant cathedral on the West Side to put the Catholics in their place.
    Sighing, Cross shifted his gaze. The daily promenade by the fashionable had begun. Men in elegantly tailored frock coats accompanied